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Tuesday, June 26, 2012
Spelling
DUMBER AND FORGIVERER. This is a sorrowful version of a funny post I've been wanting to do for years. I kept putting it off, because it was just humor and the moment never seemed completely right. Here's the premise. There are three careers in the mass media that are the easiest.
1) You can be a dead body on one
of the TV shows that feature forensic medicine.Think about it.
Your only job is not to move. They put a ton of makeup on you,
and unless you're in the U.K. they won't even show your breasts
and genitals. Which makes it a definite step up from being, say,
an exotic dancer.
2) You can be an actor -- yes, an actual actor -- in the quasi-infomercial spots that are always trying to sell life-changing appliances for $19.95 plus shipping and handling. You know. The people who can't peel a hard-boiled egg, chop an onion, put clothes on a hanger, mop a floor, make a meatloaf, cook pasta, train your dog, deal with cat litter, clean your tub, clean a frying pan, pin up your own hair, or holster your own breasts. All you have to do is be completely clumsy and incompetent, then throw up your hands in despair. Kewl. Maybe not an Emmy, but a paycheck awaits.
3) You can type captions for the hearing-impaired. Because nobody seems to care how terribly you seem to do it. Which is where I hijack my own humor post into the Twilight Zone. It used to be funny, or I thought it was funny, but in reality it's a fucking outrage.
2) You can be an actor -- yes, an actual actor -- in the quasi-infomercial spots that are always trying to sell life-changing appliances for $19.95 plus shipping and handling. You know. The people who can't peel a hard-boiled egg, chop an onion, put clothes on a hanger, mop a floor, make a meatloaf, cook pasta, train your dog, deal with cat litter, clean your tub, clean a frying pan, pin up your own hair, or holster your own breasts. All you have to do is be completely clumsy and incompetent, then throw up your hands in despair. Kewl. Maybe not an Emmy, but a paycheck awaits.
3) You can type captions for the hearing-impaired. Because nobody seems to care how terribly you seem to do it. Which is where I hijack my own humor post into the Twilight Zone. It used to be funny, or I thought it was funny, but in reality it's a fucking outrage.
If I were hearing impaired (and pushing 60 after a lifetime of rock and roll I sometimes am), I'd be filing massive class action suits. I know I've previously made an issue of the misspellings in chyrons and zippers (yeah, I've been a graphics professional in a previous life) on the Fox News Channel, but this is something altogether else. And I know that it's harder to caption things live rather than after the fact. But since I've been listening to Laura Ingraham's radio show and watching Fox News with the sound off and captions turned on, I cannot tell you how disturbed I am. Yesterday's SCOTUS decision was apparently about the status of Arizona's "boarders." Which is only the beginning of the problem. All the discussion about what lower courts enjoined is now about what they "enjoyed" or will "enjoy" in future.
Which completely omits all the dropped words, bizarre homophones, and idiotic misspellings that make reading the captions an exercise in Lear/Carroll nonsense. You can watch the typers backspacing to turn "com grace un all" into "congreshunal," but imagine yourself wanting the news.
So who is doing this work? Is this the first stop for Fox News interns, the place where they show their chops from Liberty University and Oral Roberts U.? Or is it generational instead?
Honestly, I'm old. I know how to spell. Last week I saw a story online from the L.A. or New York Times that caused me to gasp. It wasn't a misspelling. It was a flagrant usage error. The writer, in a parenthetical, used the word "unctuous" in a context that couldn't have been intended to mean anything but "egregious." I'm pretty sure the culprit wasn't Liberty or Oral Roberts. I'm thinking it's Harvard, Columbia, and Princeton. Who aren't actually in the education business anymore. Believe me, I'd be happy to debate them on the subject. But they wouldn't even know how and why I'd won. And did I mention Yale? Idiots supreme.
When I threw in the towel basically. This isn't a humor post. It's a death post. People who presume to write should know how to write.
I'm fucking sick of the MSM. And I'm fucking sick of the New Media too. FNC, Hotair and all the Big websites need an old-time copy editor. BOY, do they. But they don't return my calls.
If you're smart, you'll proofread your comments before you post them.
